Aesthetic of Repetition

Yun Mi Suh

The site that I have picked is ‘Gum Wall’ on Post Alley in Pike Place Market, Seattle. I focused on the repetition of ordinary materials in urban environment. A gum is very ordinary and banal object but a layer of gums makes powerful urban impression that attracts people. This place not only has a meaning itself as unique urban scene but also makes a performance or an event: the act of attaching gums. I observed that people enjoy the act of attaching gum on the wall, and this looked a kind of a performance of urban vernacular. I could find the evidence that some people came several times to finish their art and enjoyed the performance. This performance repeated thousands times and made a spatial form in urban area which create other activities. Also, old gums and fresh gums consisted the wall together and made a history. The layer of gum is a visible process how space is created and activated by people and time. From this idea and concept I found more similar urban scenes and then I put a gum on the wall.

Everyday Landscape in Cal Anderson and Thomas Street Park

Min Koh

Placed in the densely populated area of Capitol Hill, Cal Anderson Park and Thomas Street Park provide good get-away spaces to the surrounding neighbors. Although two parks place in the same neighborhood of the Capitol Hill, they have many differences. Cal Anderson Park is a large park that placed between Denny Way and Pine Street with 11th AVE on the West, and a block away from Broadway to the East. Because of its location surrounded by busy streets and Seattle Central Community College, Cal Anderson is open to large number of floating populations. The park is also well organized with different activity areas for the users and neighbors: play area, public restrooms, water feature, soccer and baseball, and outdoor tennis courts with lights. Unlike Cal Anderson, which is 7.37 acre wide, Thomas Street Park is only 0.25 acre small site that located on the corner of Thomas Street and Bellevue Way. Not much program due to its small size, hilled grass area with one bench is all. Since two parks are only few blocks away from each other and take about 7 minutes of walking, I thought those two parks will make a good comparison to each other about who are the users? What kinds of activities are they looking for and happening on two different parks?

Jiffy Lube / Day Care: Made in Seattle

Alex Tulinsky

The building sits on 25th Avenue N.E. adjacent to U Village, amid a typical American automobile-oriented “strip” landscape. Not a preconceived design, this building is an urban aggregation. At street level, a Jiffy Lube oil-change shop; underneath, a bilingual day-care preschool.

The unusual platform-like structure has an expansive parking lot on top, level with 25^th Ave. N.E., convenient for the high-traffic Jiffy Lube. Toward the east the ground falls away, so that the rear of the structure frames a one-story facade facing the opposite direction of the Jiffy Lube. This space houses the day-care center. This is aggregation at a large scale: two quite different structures and two quite different programs.

Another, smaller scale of aggregation is also present. At the Jiffy Lube, a covered work area has been added in the parking lot to the north of the building. Note the oil extraction device standing ready. At the school, a play area was carved out of the adjacent parking lot and fenced in. The fence was lined with plastic material at the eye-level of a pre-schooler, in an attractive geometric pattern, to block the distracting view out.

movement@montlake

Brian Monwai

The pace of movement in contemporary urban life at times runs quickly, at other times slowly. We spend a lot of time hurrying from place to place -- whether by car, by bicycle, or on foot. Sometimes we find ourselves standing still against a backdrop of people rushing by.

The direction of movement can travel in parallel lines as in a freeway, in the overlapping, criss-crossing layers of an overpass, or in a randomly dissipating cloud like smoke from a smokestack. People – strangers and friends -- form an aggregate by coming together intentionally or unintentionally, with similar or dissimilar destinations when they depart. Signage may attempt to direct the flow of movement, but most of the everyday urban movement remains uncontrolled.

The Montlake area of Seattle is a hub of variegated patterns of movement. Bus riders, automobiles, gymnasts and their fans, and bicyclists are a sampling of agents in motion. Not shown are the myriad float-planes, automobile exhaust plumes, buses, crows, and joggers that form the dynamic texture of Montlake.

This project was also an experiment at methods of capturing a sense of movement with still pictures. Notes: while the panhandler and speed limit/your speed pictures were not taken at Montlake, they helped illustrate the nuances of urban movement. The pictures in the photo mosaic were also taken from the expanded Seattle area. The mosaic was assembled with AndreaMosaic software.

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Seattle Dogs and Insurgent Space

Mackenzie Waller

Domesticated dogs are an embodiment of both culture and nature. In an urban setting, the domesticated dog becomes a centerpiece in the power and politics of manipulating the landscape. A less studied area of urban spaces fall on the border between the human/dog sphere. These are places that fall outside the boundary of these more standardized, structured spaces, and are important because they demonstrate ways that users (dog-owners) modify spaces and push legal boundaries in order to serve their needs.

The most important aspect of exploring the impact of loose space and insurgent space is to address its impact on public opinion. These spaces are often the site of behavior that is outside that which is recognized as ‘acceptable’. At times these activities have been deemed illegal, adding to a negative public opinion. This exposure to diversity allows for shifts in public opinions. Some examples of these types of insurgent spaces are shown here and they often have a much more powerful impact on public opinion than the legally sanctioned methods of programming activities.

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University Heights Center for Community

Josho Somine
LARCH 598
Winter 2009
Final Site Assessment

Site Summary
The University Heights Center for Community (UHCC) occupies a full city block north and west of NE 50th St. and University Way NE in Seattle. A large old building, formerly an elementary school, occupies the center of the block, and is surrounded by parking lots and a variety of small open spaces. The building facilities are managed by a nonprofit organization, and several other organizations rent spaces inside. Some additional rooms are available for classes and events.
The spatial and temporal uses outside the building are similarly diverse. Paved parking makes up about 2/3 of all the open space, and has multiple tenants with jurisdiction over certain sections of the lots. One large lot is turned over to the district Farmers’ Market on Saturday mornings, which is heavily attended year-round. The site also contains 2 playgrounds, one private and one public, a community garden, a small enclosed lawn, and a public entrance plaza. (See site diagram and context diagram for details of the layout.)
The Center’s stated focus is “our local community, children, arts and education, and continuing education” , and they encourage a changeable variety of tenant organizations and activities. (See current list in Appendix A) Although there is an effort to be welcoming, there is also some conflict implicit with the “seedier” aspects of the adjoining neighborhood, which is reflected in an abundance of fencing and regulatory signage all around the site.

Slideshow:

Surface: the connective tissue of our malleable city

Breanne Gearheart

The surface is being remade.
The city is in the midst of itself.
It is a reinvention and an unbiased creation.
It is a record, an accumulation.
Impressions made by a living city
pressed into its body by the pressure of time.
It is no one’s fault and no one’s genius.
It is because of us and in spite of us.

Concrete is poured, smooth walls are pieced together, metal is shaped and embedded in the ground, asphalt is scorched into place. These physical undertakings create the body of our cities. We often conceive of the urban environment as entirely designed. Decisions were made. Architects, city planners, landscape architects, neighborhood organizations, graffiti artists, and shop owners are seen as the creators of our urban surroundings. Yet, a quieter design is adding depth and richness to our cities.

Built forms are physically scarred, rubbed smooth, or momentarily altered by passing phenomenon. Physical form is activated by accidental interventions. The city becomes a physical record of intangible temporal occurrences. Time passes, people move about, rain falls, wind blows. The city is an expression of the processes that occur within it.

Through observing the changes on its surface, we can come to see the built environment as a malleable expression of the life of the city. Multiple narratives are unified and expressed in the flexible form of the city.

Rush. Rush. Wait...

Jenny Hampton

Within the urban landscape, there are often unplanned spaces where people have to wait for the next event to occur. These spaces can be incorporated into the everyday routine of people, or occur at certain times of the day, week, month, or year. These waiting spaces can consist of small groups often forming a larger group that eventually takes up a space in the city.

Waiting spaces are fluidity built upon everyday and develop differently over time. For example, at brunch spots in certain neighborhoods in the city, crowds of people can stand on the sidewalk around the hours of 10-2 on the weekend making a community of people, however any other time of day these city sidewalks would be just ordinary sidewalks.

Waiting spaces also take on a particular form. Some spaces can be shaped in a more sporadic nature, creating clusters and circles with no particular order. Whereas other waiting spaces are formed in a more linear approach, giving a controlled sense to the act of waiting.

Lastly, waiting spaces interrupt movement patterns throughout the city. Groups of people waiting act as yield signs throughout the city sidewalks, where people have to navigate through a temporarily occupied space to reach their destination. People can make a decision to join, pass-through or avoid a group of people creating a space by waiting.

Vacant Lots - Abandoned Potential

Leslie Batten

Vacant lots are scattered like patches throughout the city. Defined as "a lot with no permanent buildings", these lots take on any number of forms that allow for a variety of functions: habitat, garbage dump, exhibit space, water retention reservoir, community unifier, or just left over space. Most of us speed by without stopping to look, but with some exploration these spaces are more than just a lot devoid of a built structure. Each vacant space has a story to tell. They all have a history, an owner, passerby's and neighbors that shape these spaces. In turn, vacant spaces also influence their surroundings for better or worse. They are palimpsests of how we use the land over time, and allude to the future potential for urban renewal or redevelopment.

Many vacant lots are protected by a chain link fence that forms a barrier, as if to protect a valuable asset or to preserve its state of transition. While others remain open and unguarded. Some spaces indicate previous development with hints of foundations, or parking lots overgrown with grass and weeds. Others are neat, tidy spaces that look designed. In some cases these spaces provide a bit of nature in the midst of an otherwise built out and highly urban area. Others are in such a state of decay that they are wounds in the landscape and a source of outrage for their community. Still other vacant spaces provide for other temporary uses.

These are just a few vacant spaces scattered between Greenwood, Fremont, Ravenna and the University District. Many others with similar and unique traits are spread throughout the city, forming a connection between micro- and macro-urbanism. They too express a personality, a history, and hold a story that is more telling than just an empty lot.


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Bridging Gaps

Lea Anne Burke

In the process of connecting A to B, the vast network of roads and bridges are an integral part of daily life. Looking ahead to where you are going sometimes leads to overlooking where you are. While during the planning and construction phases, the spaces under bridges may not be intentionally, or intensively, planned. Nature abhors a vacuum and unplanned use quickly occurs. For this assignment, I have chosen to look at art created underneath bridges. Accessibility, visibility, square footage of unprogrammed space, and type of bridge construction can dictate types of art that can occur there. It can be sanctioned coordinated community projects, installations by individual artists, or the quick dashes of graffiti.

The University District has examples of all three types of art, all underneath University Bridge, between the Burke-Gillman trail and Campus Parkway. The sites are highly visible, easily accessible and have fair to high levels of pedestrian, bicycle and vehicle traffic. There is street graffiti, a large mural, and a sculptural installation. These pieces claim and define the character of the sites. They evoke reactions. What does it mean? Who made it? Should I be scared? Do I like it? Whatever the answers, they have served their purpose and asked the questions.

Designing for Graffiti

stacey reding

Human behavior can be both predictable and difficult to design for. Urban environments are unquestionably complex and dynamic in their design, yet are just as much a product of un-designed and leftover spaces of a continual evolving place. Designers intend to predict and assign appearances and usages to spaces yet through limited cultural expectations of the landscape design in urban settings, this is not the enduring result.

Freedom of expression on private property and allowing un-programmed activities in public spaces inherently prevents design from becoming static and controlled in character, however a better understanding of this loose programmatic design must be made. Graffiti may be a predictable activity in urban environments yet it has been experimentally but unsuccessfully designed for.

There is no one right answer to the question of design just as there is not always a clear line between personal expression, public art and vandalism. But by overlapping and redefining the design of complex spaces between different disciplines we might begin to better understand how to include activities such as graffiti, or prevent them without the expense of an overlapping use of the same space.

the everyday edge

The everyday edge is not a particular place. Instead it is the agglomeration of the many metaphorical boundaries between our everyday spaces: a crosswalk, a curb cut, the space between inside and outside, and the threshold or sometimes plaza between the public sidewalk and the private office. It is a boundary between the safety of the sidewalk and the untamed dangers of the automobile road. It determines the limits of public and private. It is also the informal stage where we perform our public life and share this with each other. The everyday edge is the third place, between home and work where we see the same person on the corner everyday, and on some days stop to talk or just say hello. These acts are the essence of our participation in a democratic society, and the design of the everyday edge is the hidden curriculum of democratic education. The daily performances of everyday people manifest the care we show to our home and society. Some of these spaces are left over, abandon by formal use, and become new homes to the underprivileged. Everyday people contribute pieces of paper from their pockets, a paper bag from the grocery store, a traffic cone abandon by construction crews, and many plastic bags and wrappers. Little hollow spaces collect debris, build soil, and slowly everyday plants take hold.

Insurgent Public Space: Spontaneous Vendor Food in Parking Lots

Szu-Yu Huang

Eating on board of a taco truck has been a favored topic around Puget Sound Region. The automobile culture has rooted American lifestyle since mid-20 century. However, the well equipped vehicles that carry food and serve hot dishes on boards have merged an innovative perspective of consuming food in public and have changed the usual use of parking lot and gas station corners. The exploration took six sites in Seattle metropolitan area, qualitative observations and brief interviews were conducted on site.

The taco truck urban landscape is intriguing, a segment of aggregate urban landscape, a juxtaposition of formal and informal, permanent and ephemeral use, as well as designed and impromptu activity. The purpose of this study focuses on what the influence of having food vendors in public realm are, how taco truck establishes its business legally in urban setting, and what types of sociocultural phenomena are usually associated with taco-truck can be found in the urban landscape.

The looseness characteristic of parking lot attracts unplanned business to establish its activity. Inasmuch as the concern of public health, governmental regulation reinforces the safety of food handling process and serving condition of vender food, such as taco truck. The energy of vibrant social interaction and dynamic cultural exchange flows in the insurgent public space-- taco truck on a parking lot.

Historic Façades Don’t Tell The Whole Story

Moghan Lyon

Locations: Cascade (South Lake Union), Queen Anne, Belltown


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Uniqueness, character and history are disappearing from the neighborhoods of Seattle. In the past, neighborhoods such as Cascade, Queen Anne and Belltown had such flavor and individuality; they are now being overrun by ordinary, mind-numbing buildings that are being built and found throughout the city and all over the country. Design originality is no longer as important as maximizing profit and space. The result of this development is the loss of historic layers which used to rekindle memories of stories and events that took place in these older neighborhoods long ago. The distinctiveness and inimitable icons of the diverse neighborhoods created an aggregate urbanism. A sense of ownership was created. These iconic neighborhoods, special in their own ways, came together like a puzzle to create the aggregate we know as Seattle. Seattle has always been considered a small city where differences were accepted and quirkiness was encouraged. Unfortunately, the aggregation of the neighborhoods and city have slowly dissolved. Development without thought of history and character has won out. Seattle is losing its appeal as a place where sticking out and standing apart from the rest of the crowd is no longer acceptable. Be bold, stand out, try something new and different!

Everyday Sidewalks

James Ellingboe

Sidewalk as Platform

Location: Seattle downtown retail core: map.

Are sidewalks just for moving people?

The following observations demonstrate that sidewalks are platforms for a multitude of forums. In this particular case study, entrepreneurial, political, and entertainment forums from Seattle’s Pike Street Public Market up Pine Street through the downtown retail core. The observed activities seemed to follow a pattern of being located at street intersection corners or at mid-block. These areas of activity also happened to coincide with the sunniest parts of the street, an important note for a cold January day.

The intended timing of the observations was to be during the lunch hour, but even an hour or so after the lunch crowds had vacated the sidewalks, there was plenty of pedestrian activity to warrant the presence of people using the sidewalk as a performance, sales, religious, or political platform. All of these activities lend to a vibrancy of social life within the urban form.

Good urban design should afford opportunities for people to use the public realm, as participants or observers, for a variety of discourse. Good sidewalk design should allow people the choice to ebb away from these observed activities or flow through them.